


choosing solitude

by efreet



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: BBL spoilers, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 09:34:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3285425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/efreet/pseuds/efreet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hitori remembers what's important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	choosing solitude

**Author's Note:**

> This is my Hatoful Gift Exchange for tumblr user ramblinkat! I am so, so, sorry that this isn't the Nageki/Ryouta fic I intended to write... And I hope that a thousand or so words of pain can make up for it. Happy Legumentine's! 
> 
> (Please note that this fic references/describes canon events that may be triggering.)

Hitori doesn’t believe in second chances, doesn’t believe that the broken pieces of his life will ever fit back together. The memories of the time he spent with his family, the time he spent as an older brother, a teacher, a mentor, are all tainted—bloodstained. There are only bits and pieces left— a birthday party, a starry night, an open field beneath the sunset. He can remember these, if he tries hard enough. But it takes a spring breeze or the scent of baking things or a clear sky to remind him. Sometimes even then, the memories are blurred, unrecognizable.

 

What Hitori does remember is walking home on a Friday afternoon, arms full of ingredients for dinner. He remembers dropping everything on the sidewalk, sprinting past everyone and everything between him and the house. 

 

He remembers the bloodstains, the corpses. He remembers seeing the children he loved sprawled across the carpets, limbs twisted and eyes blank. He remembers the nausea, the horror rising in him like a living thing, choking him.

 

And he remembers the crying—wailing, really. A child, one of _his_ children. He remembers running, slipping over the blood and the bodies, searching for the source of the sound. At the time, he hadn’t even recognized it. He had never heard Nageki cry like that before.

 

He can’t remember finding Nageki alive. Whatever had happened after that has been twisted, warped, and all he can remember is the smell of smoke and the heat from the flames, and screaming _no, no, no._

 

He can’t remember the days before Nageki left for school, either. There had been an apartment, and the two of them had lived together for a little while. He knows that, logically, but he can’t recall what the room looked like, where they had slept, what Nageki’s expression looked like. 

 

The shadow helps him remember, though. It fills in the blank spaces with memories how Hitori pressured him into going to school, into getting treatment from the hospital there. He rewrites the letters Nageki had sent, reminding Hitori how he had ignored what should have been obvious. 

 

Whenever Hitori closes his eyes, it reminds him of what he’s lost, takes Nageki’s face and voice and asks, _Why did you do this to me?_

 

Hitori has forgotten what Nageki’s smiles looked like, the look in his eyes as he opened a book, his expression lit by a blood red sunset. 

 

He doesn’t deserve those memories. He lets them burn out, turn to ash that tastes bitter against his tongue. 

 

When he finds Kazuaki Nanaki crying under a streetlamp, Hitori thinks, _I’ve already killed once before, anyway._

 

He takes Kazuaki’s hand and leads him home, sits with him before the glow of a TV screen, whispers words from a script he’s long since memorized. 

 

Kazuaki rests his head against Hitori’s shoulder and cries. Over and over he tells Hitori that he wants to die, that he can’t live like this. He sleeps on Hitori’s couch, and fails his exams, and wastes all his money on mobile games, and cries some more. 

 

Kazuaki is in pain, and distantly Hitori knows he should help him. He knows when someone is in pain, the natural response is to reach out, to ease their suffering. 

 

But Kazuaki is not the reason he wakes up and gets out of bed and puts on a smile every morning. Kazuaki cannot help him avenge Nageki.

 

Hitori kills him. He doesn’t try to pretend that this was what Kazuaki wanted, doesn’t bother to keep up the illusion of friendship. Those memories have to be washed out, drowned, so he won’t have anything left to hold him back. 

 

Hitori forgets that Kazuaki held onto his hands and cried _I love you_. He forgets Kazuaki’s laughter, his clumsiness, his watery smiles. 

 

He smooths the memories over and makes a mask of them instead. He says _Kazuaki Nanaki_ until the name becomes words, and the words become nothing. 

 

But Kazuaki clings to him, even in death. When Hitori sleeps, the nightmares that overtake him are full of rich, bright colors, so unlike the darkness that Nageki’s death had plunged him into. 

 

He wears Kazuaki’s name and face, and he walks through the school hallways and wonders how many floors below him Nageki died. 

 

None of them see through his act. His homeroom class is full of energetic, bright students, but it’s like watching from behind a pane of thick glass. 

 

Isa Souma hovers at the edge of his vision, and Hitori—Kazuaki—tries to hold on, tries to remember that he’s going to _kill him,_ but Kazuaki and Nageki are tearing him in two, and he can barely think past the nightmares.

 

And then one of his students dies. Hiyoko Tosaka, with her loud voice and even louder laughter, is found dead. And everything clears, like smoke being blown away. There’s something about the corpse and Ryouta Kawara’s horrified eyes that reminds him why he’s here, what he’s doing. 

 

Deep beneath the school, he takes the gun and shoots Isa Souma three times. Kazuaki forgets the sharp smiles Iwamine Shuu had thrown him, the even sharper jabs at his intelligence, and the enjoyment he felt in responding in kind. He can only hear Nageki, screaming at him.

 

If he cuts Ryouta Kawara open, he’ll find Nageki again. 

 

And he does. He does, he does, he does. 

 

He doesn’t even need the knife. Nageki is there, and Hitori _remembers._

 

He remembers Nageki’s voice reading aloud to him, Nageki’s smile as he turned the pages of a book, the sound of Nageki’s laughter. He remembers the wind against his back and the setting sun.

 

He remembers pounding against a door, the metal hot against his fists, and the roar of the flames in his ears, and beneath it all, 

 

_Live, Hitori. Live, and be happy._

 

It’s a little like dawn, a brightness that burns away the darkness Hitori has been living in for so long. The shadow doesn’t disappear, but it recedes, shrinking into something so small that Hitori can hardly hear it’s voice.

 

Kazuaki is still there, will probably always be there, but he’s also smaller than before. He’s no longer the all-powerful king that haunted Hitori’s dreams, but instead has become a tiny, shivering thing.

 

Hitori doesn’t believe in second chances. He won’t ever get his family back, won’t ever get to save Nageki from the fire. He can’t take back what he did to Kazuaki, either. 

 

But he remembers, and this time he won’t forget.

 


End file.
